Freelancing has changed. The clients haven t.
Most bad freelance projects don t start with an obvious disaster. They start with a client message that feels slightly off.
I learned this the expensive way after losing my job, spending two years jobless, and freelancing out of necessity. I walked into scope creep, ghosted payments, vague briefs, and proposals that went nowhere.
Hey Product Hunt 👋
I built FreelancerGuard because freelancers lose money in a predictable, preventable way. Not from lack of skill, but from ignoring warning signals in client messages that only become obvious after the project goes badly.
"Quick simple project."
"Budget TBD."
"Great exposure."
"We had a bad experience with the last developer."
Every freelancer recognises these phrases in retrospect. Almost none have a way to catch them in real time, before saying yes.
FreelancerGuard has two tools:
🚩 Red Flag Detector — paste any client inquiry, get a 0–100 risk score across 5 categories with specific phrases highlighted and explained. Rules-based, instant, no AI black box. Free to try with no signup.
📧 Scope Creep Email Generator — when a client asks for "just one more thing" outside the original scope, get a professional ready-to-send email in 30 seconds that holds the boundary without burning the relationship.
A few things I'm proud of:
Raw inquiry text is never stored.
The engine shows exactly which phrase triggered which risk category and why.
The output is shareable, which is a scored result card freelancers can screenshot and send to their communities.
Compound risk detection catches when multiple weak signals combine into a serious pattern.
Would love honest feedback, especially from freelancers who've taken a project they knew felt wrong. Did the score match your gut?
Try it free at freelancerguard.fyi